A playoff roll with appeal: Mississippi State near finals

OMAHA, Neb. — Go bananas, Mississippi State Bulldogs! You’re one win away from the College World Series finals.

Jordan Westburg hit a grand slam, doubled and drove in seven runs and Mississippi State continued its surprise postseason surge by beating North Carolina 12-2 on Tuesday.

The Bulldogs (39-27), with two wins at the CWS, are off until Friday. Win then or on Saturday and they’ll play for the national championship next week.

This game was all about Westburg, the freshman who two weeks ago came up with the “Rally Banana” that’s become the Bulldogs’ good-luck charm in the NCAA Tournament. His seven RBIs, on the slam in the second inning and three-run double in the eighth, tied a CWS record.

“I think we had a good banana today. That’s all I can say,” Westburg deadpanned.

Westburg crushed a breaking pitch Austin Bergner left hanging, and the ball landed in the seats above the left-field bullpen for a 4-1 lead.

When Westburg returned to the dugout, a teammate handed him his Rally Banana.

Westburg came up with the Bulldogs’ alternate mascot during a regional game against Oklahoma on June 3. The Bulldogs were struggling when he went into the tunnel and grabbed a banana. Instead of eating it, he put it on his head in hopes of turning the Bulldogs’ luck. It must have worked. Mississippi State won, Westburg and his banana got some TV time, and the meme took off.

Since then, Westburg has been the curator of the fruit. (No, it’s not the same banana every game.)

He’s put sunscreen and bug spray on it. He’s wrapped one in a towel, as if it were releaxing at a spa. Sometimes Westburg or a teammate puts the banana up to his face like a mustache; other times it’s a faux radar gun.

A couple Mississippi State fans have been dressed up in banana outfits, others wear Rally Banana T-shirts, and the Bulldogs have received best wishes from banana producers Dole and Chiquita.

“If you’re going to do all the shenanigans in the dugout,” Westburg said, “you might have to step it up on the field and back that up. It was nice to do that today.”

Kowar (10-5) held the Longhorns (42-23) scoreless on five hits, mixing his changeup with a fastball still touching the mid-90s deep into his season-high 121-pitch afternoon.

The Kansas City Royals’ first-round draft pick struck out the side in the third and sixth innings and broke his previous high of 11 Ks he set against TCU in the CWS last year. He became the first pitcher with 13 strikeouts in a CWS game since 2010 and, according to ESPN, the first in 40 years to do it in fewer than seven innings.

India, the No. 5 overall pick by the Cincinnati Reds, singled to make it 1-0 in the first inning and he broke the game open with his three-run homer in the sixth.